She was visiting for the first time. Over the next few days, our only not-so-hidden-agenda was to forget ourselves. The weather was brewed and just right for poetry. A haiku here, a tanka there, and a little free verse to drown in. Our faces beamed with happiness, and were also tinged with the temporality of it all. She would go back. I would be left all by myself again. I received a book of Gulzar’s poems as a gift from her. And a box of chocolates.

A month later, all that remains are a few wrappers in the drawer.

winter rain…
eavesdropping I listen
to nothing
but the sound of my breath
bounce off the walls

—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.